o_19mvj7ch5iumnlelt11hpp13o6a.pdf

22 The Believer's Authority
In the first verse we read, "And you hath he quickened, who
were dead in trespasses and sins." Here the Holy Spirit is saying
through Paul, "According to the working of the strength of His
might when He raised Him from the dead and you when you
were dead."
You see, the same verb in Ephesians 1:20 that expresses the
reviving of Christ from the dead expresses the reviving of His
people in Ephesians 2:1. In other words, the act of God that
raised Christ from the dead also raised His Body. In the mind of
God, when Jesus was raised from the dead, we were raised from
the dead!
Further into the second chapter we read, "Even when we
were dead in sins, [He] hath quickened us together with Christ,..
.And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in
heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (vv. 5,6). This passage deals
with the conferring of this authority.
Notice that the Head (Christ) and the Body (the Church)
were raised together. Furthermore, this authority was conferred
not only upon the Head, but also upon the Body, because the
Head and the Body are one. (When you think of a person, you
think of his head and body as one.)
As far as I know, churches believe that we were raised up
together with Christ. Why don't they believe that we've been
made to sit together with Him? If part of this verse is so, the
whole verse is so.
If the Church ever gets the revelation that we are the Body
of Christ, we'll rise up and do the works of Christ! Until now,
we've been doing them only limitedly.
When we realize that the authority that belongs to Christ
also belongs to individual members of the Body of Christ and is
available to us, our lives will be revolutionized!
1 CORINTHIANS 12:12-14,27
12 For as the body is one, and hath many members,
and all the members of that one body, being many, are